8 Channel People Making Waves This Week at Splunk, Telarus, More
Our No. 1 story is a list within a list.
June 24, 2022
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Splunk unveiled enhancements to its Partnerverse partner program it launched in March during its first in-person conference since the start of the pandemic.
It made the announcement to 12,500 attendees and more than 1,800 partners in Las Vegas. The conference also included Splunk’s Global Partner Summit, a dedicated program to help partners extend the value of Splunk.
Gary Steele, Splunk’s new president and CEO, gave the opening keynote. He joined Splunk in March after serving as Proofpoint’s CEO for nearly 20 years. Steele made waves for his enthusiasm for his new role.
“I’ve been here roughly two months and couldn’t be more excited,” Steele said. “After 20 years in cybersecurity, I realized it’s a data problem, and where better to go than Splunk.”
Splunk has the world’s leading platform for observability and security, Steele said.
Read Edward Gately’s reporting from the conference.
Fred Voccola, CEO of Kaseya, took the stage at the company’s Connect IT Global 2022. He discussed a variety of topics, including what many in the audience were waiting for — the Kaseya acquisition of Datto. Voccola made waves for emphasizing that Kaseya will not make dramatic changes to Datto as a result.
“Datto makes us ‘more Kaseya,’” said Voccola. “Kaseya is a company that is singularly focused on delivering the solutions partners need. We are keeping Datto, Datto. Our goal is to not mess things up. When we buy companies, we keep what makes them great, and augment other things.”
Kaseya also announced that it closed on its Datto acquisition, noting that Datto CEO Tim Weller would be leaving the company, but SVP of business development Rob Rae would stay.
Catch Allison Francis’ coverage of the conference here.
OneTrust confirmed layoffs impacting 950 employees, or about 25% of its workforce as part of a reorganization despite record quarters and increasing customer demand.
That’s according to Kabir Barday, the CEO of OneTrust, the privacy, security and governance provider based in Atlanta. Barday made waves for announcing the layoffs when his company is perceived to be doing well.
“It is one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make as a leader,” Barday said in a blog. “My responsibility is to ensure OneTrust thrives and is positioned for sustained growth, and unfortunately, reducing our headcount and adapting to the capital markets sentiment is what is needed to keep us in our leadership position.”
Read more about the company’s decision to cut workers.
Stephen Orban made waves this week for leaving a prominent role as vice president of AWS Marketplace, partner engineering and ISVs. Now, he will develop strategy and programs for customers migrating to Google Cloud.
Orban is one of the leading voices in the industry on cloud, enterprise IT, and cloud go-to-market, partnerships and marketplaces. He’s overseen engineering, product, sales and channel operations in his roles at AWS, and worked alongside leading software and services providers.
Learn more about Orban’s background here.
In Channel Futures first annual “CF List” focused on top SASE providers, analysts share their views on what it takes to succeed with the technology. It includes a new list and fresh views on changes in the competitive landscape.
Garrett Bekker, a senior research analyst with S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 451 Research, made waves for outlining how vendors integrate the various pieces of SASE.
“To me, the five core features of a SASE are firewall-as-a-service/NGFW, SD-WAN, secure web gateway (SWG), zero trust network access (ZTNA) and cloud access security broker (CASB),” he said. “There are other ancillary features of SASE also, such as data loss prevention (DLP), encryption or remote browser isolation (RBI). Few vendors actually have all the pieces. So one criterion for success is completeness of solution, and how tightly integrated the various pieces are. Or are they just cobbled together?”
To find out which providers made the list, go here.
Telarus acquired TCG in a move that expands its reach geographically and establishes the firm as one of the leading players in a technology distribution market experiencing rapid consolidation.
Telarus said the combined company will be the largest technology solutions brokerage (formerly master agent) in the channel.
Telarus CEO Adam Edwards made waves with Dan Pirigyi. The two will now be working together, as Pirigyi, a partner at TCG, will be senior vice president of strategic partners at Telarus.
“As we looked around the landscape, we … gravitated to these guys,” Pirigyi said. “We’ve admired them from afar for some time.”
To learn more about the acquisition, read here and here.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the story capturing readers’ attention the most wasn’t a story but our 2022 MSP 501 List. Thousands flocked to Channel Futures this week, including to view our final list, the Top 50 of the 501 winners.
Many of these elite 50 had a lot to say about the MSP industry, including Amber Bardon, CEO of Parasol Alliance (No. 4 on the 2022 501 list). She made waves for summing up the reasons outsourcing IT work is prevalent for SMBs.
“It’s becoming harder and harder for small businesses to attract and retain high quality IT staff,” Bardon said. “This leads me to believe that this is causing greater outsourcing. Security is not a surprise at all — we are seeing a huge increase in phishing attempts and ransomware attacks. Additionally, in our industry, insurance companies are now being much more strict in granting cybersecurity insurance, which is driving change.”
It shouldn’t be surprising that the story capturing readers’ attention the most wasn’t a story but our 2022 MSP 501 List. Thousands flocked to Channel Futures this week, including to view our final list, the Top 50 of the 501 winners.
Many of these elite 50 had a lot to say about the MSP industry, including Amber Bardon, CEO of Parasol Alliance (No. 4 on the 2022 501 list). She made waves for summing up the reasons outsourcing IT work is prevalent for SMBs.
“It’s becoming harder and harder for small businesses to attract and retain high quality IT staff,” Bardon said. “This leads me to believe that this is causing greater outsourcing. Security is not a surprise at all — we are seeing a huge increase in phishing attempts and ransomware attacks. Additionally, in our industry, insurance companies are now being much more strict in granting cybersecurity insurance, which is driving change.”
Channel people at Splunk, Telarus and Parasol Alliance are just a few of the individuals making waves this week. Channel Futures’ Channel People Making Waves highlights those who have made an impact over the last seven days.
One CEO received criticism for laying off a sizeable portion of his workforce. It’s not necessarily the layoffs that are of issue in and of themselves, but the justification he gave for them. The company had record growth. Read on to find out which firm is in the hot seat.
We feature two Telarus executives (one tenured and one new) mainly because they show comradery and team spirit in the wake of an acquisition. Who are these channel leaders?
Finally, it’s a list within a list. Our No.1 “story” is actually a rundown of the top channel companies within an industry. Click on the above slideshow to find out more.
And if you didn’t catch the previous roundup, you can find it here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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